Op-Ed

Having It All

Posted on June 27, 2012

This month’s issue of The Atlantic includes an article by Anne-Marie Slaughter titled, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.”

I came across the article when it was shared in a LinkedIn group that I’m a part of, and it immediately sparked a lot of comments and conversation. I’ve been stewing over the article ever since I read it, and I wanted to take time to really think — and write — about what gave me such a visceral reaction.

I’ve narrowed it down to the following:

All For One Is Not All For All

In the context of “having it all” the word “all”should be a self-defined metric. Here, the author has interpreted her son’s difficulties and her decision to leave her position in Washington, D.C. as a failure to achieve it all. She then takes her evaluation of herself, and extends it out to all women to say that because she has, in her own estimation, not achieved it “all” it is therefore impossible for women, in general, to have it “all” and that feminism has misled us in thinking that we can.

For me, “having it all” is about having choices. By my definition, Slaughter did “have it all” — she had the opportunity to choose, and to decline, jobs. She left one high-powered position to return to her previous one. Not all working women have that abundance of choices. Not all women who work do so because they choose to, but because they have to. Not all women have an engaged co-parent to lean on for family obligations when work gets demanding. Not all women have the flexiblity in their jobs to care for a child, or an aging parent, or a sick spouse. Being able to choose to dial one’s career up or down, being able to take a break to give birth, and have a paid maternity leave…these are luxuries that not all parents have.

To be fair, though, if I take issue with Slaughter extending her definition of all to me, I should not do the same to her. My “all” is not her “all,” and she is entitled whatever feelings she has about her own experience and achievements. But, I would like to publicly say: Ms. Slaughter, I think you have a remarkable career and are quite clearly a caring and engaged parent. I admire your accomplishments, both professional and personal.

“All” Doesn’t Mean “Perfect”

“Having it all” doesn’t translate to “a flawless life.” Slaughter seems to have interpreted her son’s rough period as an indictment of her choice to work, despite the fact that her husband was able to scale back at his job to spend more time parenting. Let’s reverse the situation and say that she had instead scaled back to spend more time as a parent, while her husband pursued his career more aggressively. If her son was still having issues, would his father take on that psychological burden and say, “This must be because I’m working too much.”? Why do we do this to ourselves, mothers? Why do we assume that an issue in our family life is somehow caused by our pursuit of a career? And why do we assume that scaling back would fix it? I’m not saying that the presence of a mother (or father) isn’t valuable to a child — it certainly is. But, it’s also not a guarantee that one’s child will progress through life without rough patches.

Women is not synonymous with mothers. The title of Slaughter’s piece is "Why Women Still Can’t Have It All" which, as written, presumes that until a woman has children, she hasn’t achieved it "all." The subtext being, "Working women, you haven’t achieved it all unless you also have a child. Mothers, you haven’t achieved it all if you don’t also have a career.

Women, Humans, or Parents?

I dislike that this argument is presented as a “woman” thing. “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” would be better titled, “Why Any Human Being Could Never Have It All, And Still Can’t.” That this is directed specifically at women is telling; it’s because this concept of working AND being a good parent is still seen as primarily a “woman’s issue.” It assumes that a woman’s default role must be as primary caregiver, and that in order to pursue a demanding and/or time-consuming career is an “extra.” And that’s because this is still a prevailing cultural norm that women and men have internalized despite decades spent fighting against it. If a kid gets sick, everyone assumes that it’s mom that will go home from work to care for him. We don’t need to think that way anymore.

More importantly, this article is not about women not being able to have it all — it is about mothers not being able to have it all. That’s a subtle, but important, difference. The title, as written, presumes that until a woman has children, she hasn’t achieved it “all.” The subtext being, “Women, you haven’t achieved it all until you’ve had a child. Mothers, you haven’t achieved it all if you don’t have a career.” That sentiment chills me. And it’s why I return to my first point: “having it all” is about choosing what “all” means to YOU. Everyone else, and their opinions about it, can sod off.

Change

I do agree that society needs to change. We need to redefine what it means to “have it all.” We need to start expecting more out of fathers. We need, as women, to stop taking on such a disproportionate amount of the physical and psychological burdens of parenting. And employers need to think in radical new ways about how to create environments that support people — not just parents, but people. We have the technology! There’s no reason why we can’t think more creatively about how and when we work. We don’t all have to be in a cubicle from 8am-6pm. We can work remotely, we can video conference, we can do a million things that help people pursue their careers on a more irregular, personalized schedule that doesn’t sacrifice the quantity or quality of their work, and integrates with whatever other life goals they have, whether it’s traveling around the world, having kids, or training for a marathon.

That being said, as James Joyner pointed out in his blog post, “Why Men Can’t Have It All, Either”:

“All things being equal, those willing to put 90 hours a week into their careers are going to get ahead of those willing to put in 60, much less 40. While there is any number of studies showing that working too many hours is actually counterproductive from an efficiency standpoint, there nonetheless is a rare breed of cat who can keep up a frenetic work schedule for years on end. And those workaholics are simply more valuable to the company, agency, or organization than those who clock out at 5. That means that those of us who choose to prioritize our children are going to get out-hustled by those without children, or those willing to let their children spend longer hours with a partner or childcare provider.”

That’s never going to change. Sorry. So, yeah — if you want to excel a job that requires (or encourages) 90-hour workweeks, and you also want to have kids, you’re going to have problems — probably personal, familial, and professional. That’s not a flaw in feminism or in you — it’s just a basic limitation of the 24-hour day.

Being Smart About ‘The Cloud’

Posted on May 15, 2011

“The Cloud” is something that is coming up for me, and my cohorts, in meetings, planning sessions and hosting discussions more and more all the time. As we talk about it more I’m noticing some really interesting ways that people respond to the idea of ‘The Cloud.’ This post isn’t about explaining what the cloud actually is because we’ve already done that twice, in a blog post and a podcast. Instead I’d like to debunk a few of the more common assumptions I’m hearing about the cloud in order to encourage people to be thoughtful about the cloud solutions they consider.

In an effort to keep things simple I’m just going to list some of the most common misperceptions about the cloud and my response to those inaccuracies:

1) Putting my software or web business in the cloud means I never have to think about it.

-Not really true. Yes, it’s true that by tapping into cloud infrastructure you don’t have to invest in hardware and software and infrastructure. But to think that by abdicating all control to some nameless, faceless entity without making yourself or any part of your organization responsible for some awareness of where things are or how they are managed or by whom and how often is just irresponsible. You wouldn’t leave a brick and mortar store open and unattended – why would you do it to your digital business?

2) The cloud never goes down – it is 100% reliable in terms of up-time.

-This is my favorite assumption. Cloud services aren’t magic. They run on the same kind of hardware that has always served as the backbone of the network we call the internet. Yes it may be more robust and of a much larger scale. But technology, by it’s very nature is fallible. It fails. Anyone who’s been using Gmail for the last year can recall at least one time when it was down for nearly an entire business day. Gmail is a service in the ‘cloud’ and it is owned and maintained by one of the largest, most magical technology companies on the planet. And yet – it went down – and in doing so it paralyzed business and panicked it’s users for a period of many hours. It happens. Understanding that the cloud is capable of failure going into it will save a lot of headache and disappointment when you’re confronted with that failure.

3) Big businesses trust the cloud and never have to worry — that’s enough for me.

-References are a good thing for any business. Being able to point to companies or brands that have good experiences with any service is a great way to feel more comfortable choosing a technology provider. But big companies suffer technology failures too. Case in point–recently customers (and not just any old customers) using Amazon cloud services experienced some significant down time. Some of the customers were so big that the outage made the news – both because of the business that was effected and the amount of time the services were down.

4) Cloud services are more secure than other options.

-This is probably pretty true – in that it is in the cloud provider’s best interest to significantly invest in securing their networks because protecting their client’s data is probably their single most critical responsibility. However, criminals think like criminals – and they are constantly exploring ways to exploit weaknesses in technology — which, as I’ve already mentioned, is not infallible. To assume that any service provider is 100% secure is not the way to consider their offering. Instead, care about the process they have in place for continued and rigorous evaluation of their security – do they have 3rd party scanning and audits of their systems to ensure they are always working to prevent exploits? And find out what the process is in response to a security vulnerability. If they get hacked – what happens? What procedures are in place to notify their administrators, and you, and then what happens to re-secure your date and prevent this sort of issue going forward?

5) Only giant global brands can offer cloud services or software in any sort of meaningful way.

-This is completely false. Cloud services can be offered by companies with names that are NOT Amazon or Microsoft and they can be just as reliable and secure. And, if service and accessibility are important to you – you might actually want to consider a smaller provider. Because we all know how hard it is to get through to giant, national service providers. As with any business service – thinking critically and strategically about your needs and expectations and mapping out a plan are the best ways to approach your business requirements. Think about what is important to you and make a list of those priorities – is it service with a smile? Is it a 24/7 help line? Is it price? Is it security and monitoring? Create a matrix of products and service guarantees and compare them by price and service level. In the end you’ll understand more about what it means to use cloud hosting and/or computing services – and you’ll have a better grasp of what it means for your business.

The important lesson in all of this is – just because the service is attached to a globally recognized brand like, say Verizon, for instance, doesn’t mean that you are without any responsibility and it certainly doesn’t mean the technology itself is flawless. There is no such thing as fail-proof technology. What you’re thinking of is magic.

Informational Interviews

Posted on March 3, 2011

We recorded a podcast (#32) on this topic, but I think it’s handy to have a written guide for this kind of information as well.

So here you have it: the Geek Girls Guide to a kickass informational interview.

Pre-Interview

Get Noticed

It’s totally appropriate to use Twitter (or a message via LinkedIn) to make yourself known to a professional that you’d like to have an informational interview — in fact, that’s sometimes the best way to stand out. But follow up with a more formal email if they bite on your offer via Twitter.
Email is also a good option, but it can sometimes be hard to get a response (depending on how much email the person gets).
Want to really stand out? Try snail mail; people don’t get much actual mail anymore.
Be clear about what you want. “Will you have coffee with me?” could mean a lot of things. Do you want to be friends? Are you asking me on a date? Ask for what you want — and not just an “informational interview.” Say something more specific, “I’d like to learn more about project management.” or, “I’m looking for input on my portfolio.”

Scheduling

Ask for 30 minutes. Getting an hour of someone’s time might be a challenge. But, if you can get an hour…sweet!
If you can get the person to meet you offsite, do it! They’ll be less likely to be interrupted by co-workers. To that end, if you shoot for a meeting at the beginning of the day the person is less likely to be distracted by the day’s work.
Confirm the meeting a day or two before. Don’t be discouraged or deterred if the person has to reschedule; it happens.

Do Your Homework

In an informational interview, YOU are interviewing the person you’re meeting with. In a job interview, THEY are interviewing you. So, prepare!
Google the living hell out of the person you are interviewing with, and the company the work for. Don’t be creepy, but dig deep. The more you know about what they do and how they got there, the more you can ask questions that are relevant and thoughtful. It may even reveal connections or common interests you weren’t aware of!

Interview Day

Show Up Early

If you are meeting someone for coffee, get there an hour early. I’m not joking. You want to be the first one there, so you can buy the person their cup of coffee. This is a critical piece of etiquette! Even if the person refuses your offer to pay — at least you’ve made the offer.
If you’re meeting someone at their office, try to be 10 minutes early. That’s early enough to show you’re serious, not so early that it’s awkward. It also doesn’t cut it too close; you want time to take off your coat and organize your thoughts. Whatever you do, don’t be late.
Play it safe. Assume that the route to your destination will take you twice as long as it usually does. If that means you end up sitting in your car a block away for 20 minutes just to kill time before the interview, so be it.

Have an Agenda

Have a list of questions that you want to ask the person. And not generic questions, either. Be thoughtful; you’ll make an impression.
Bringing a notebook and pen is an easy way to make it clear that you take the interview seriously.
Watch the clock: if the person agreed to give you 30 minutes and the conversation is still rolling along at 28 minutes, give a courtesy time check. “Do you need to go, or would it be okay if I asked you just one more question?” or, “I don’t want to take too much of your time, and I see our 30 minutes is nearly up.” You can set your phone to vibrate when there are 5 minutes left so that you know it’s time to start closing the conversation.

Close Strong

Thank the person for their time.
If you got something helpful out of the conversation, tell them.
Hand them a business card.

Post-Interview

Follow Up

A tweet, an email, a paper thank you note? I’d recommend all three! Include a business card with your thank you note, too — why not?
It’s okay to try to connect with the person via LinkedIn afterward, but include a personal message, “Thanks for the informational interview on Monday. Your advice about project management was really helpful to me. I’d like to keep in touch, do you mind if we connect here on LinkedIn?”
I’d advise against trying to friend the person on Facebook; that just feels too personal. Twitter and LinkedIn are a better bet for staying connected to someone you’d like to stay connected with as a mentor and possible future boss!

That’s it! What do you think? Did I miss any critical informational interview advice?

Social Media for Humans (in 3 Easy Steps!)

Posted on November 12, 2010

Lately, lots of people have been asking about how to handle social media on an individual level. The questions really boil down to this: “How much should I share?” and “How ‘strategic’ should I be about what I share?”

My answer is simple:

1. Keep an eye on the content you’re putting out about yourself and determine if it’s an accurate representation.
2. Think about what content you want to — or should — share.
3. Try stuff, and see how you like it. Keep doing the stuff that feels right and quit the stuff that doesn’t.

Business Strategy vs. Personal Strategy

There’s a difference between organizations and individuals when it comes to social media. Generally speaking, an organization’s goals are relatively static; it’s strategies and tactics that, to varying degrees, change more often. But, as a human, goals change all the time. Sometimes, there is no goal. I’ve certainly published content about myself that had no point except that I wanted to say it. (Actually, that pretty much sums up my 20s.) But the same goes for real life, too — we have all sorts of pointless conversations with each other because that’s what humans do. The seemingly pointless actually does have a point and that point is socializing. That we would create technology to facilitate this was inevitable.

Organizations are starting to get comfortable with the notion that if they can figure out how to socialize with us — or at least connect with us in social spaces without pissing us off — it might lead to business. But, ultimately, their goal is business. No matter how you cut it, how awesome an organization’s social media engagement is, the hard truth is that they’re trying to sell you something. There’s nothing wrong with that (Go, capitalism!), but organizations aren’t in the business of being our friend. They’re in the business of business.

So, like I said: sometimes, for people, there is no goal. At other times, our goals are quite concrete: Get a job. Sell a house. Find a daycare. And during those times our social interactions, online and off, are often in service of those goals. It is in those times that we are grateful for all the non-goal oriented interactions we’ve had with people, because now we feel okay about asking them for favors. We get a little (ahem) strategic about who we communicate with, and how.

When my son was a baby, my goal was to find some new friends to hang out with because I felt kind of lonely as a too-busy working mom with two young children. Did I write that goal down and create a strategic plan to find friends? Nope. I organized a happy hour with a bunch of chicks I knew via Twitter. People that seemed funny, smart and interesting based on the stuff they were sharing. I formed an opinion about who they were and whether or not I wanted to hang out with them based mainly on what they had shared online. In other, more gross jargon-y talk, I selected them based on their personal brand.

But getting overly “strategic” about your personal social media usage can be skeevy. It removes some of the humanity that makes social media…social. On the flip side, not stopping to think about what you share can be damaging to you, your employer (and therefore, your employment), and your family and friends. So, how can you be thoughtful about what you share online without going overboard and creating a spreadsheet and quarterly reports about your bad self?

My© Patented™ Process♥

1. Keep an eye on the content you’re putting out about yourself and determine if it’s an accurate representation.

To take care of the “keep an eye on the content” part of this, Google yourself, and set up Google Alerts (see our 5-Minute Guide to Google Alerts) for your own name, and any other names or terms you want to keep an eye on.

As far as whether or not it’s an accurate representation, you can decide that for yourself. Or, better yet, ask someone who doesn’t know you very well to Google you and send you a recap of who they think you are based on what they find. You might be surprised.

If what they find dismays you, start cleaning it up by creating new, more accurate content (or, if they didn’t find anything — start creating ANY content). LinkedIn is a great place to begin because it’s very low risk (in terms of sharing personal information) and ranks highly in Google search results.

2. Think about what content you want to — or should — share and make public.

Does your Facebook profile show up in Google search results? Do you want it to? How much can strangers see of your profile?
Are you going to use location-based networks like Foursquare? Who do you want knowing where you are?
Who do you want knowing what your political or religious beliefs are?
Do you want to connect with clients or co-workers?
How might revealing personal information affect your professional life and vice versa?

There are no right answers. What do YOU want to to share? There are valid reasons for making lots of your information open to the public, and many risks, too. It’s just like the stock market: some people have a high tolerance for risk and others don’t. Figure out how safe you want to play it, and start there. It makes no difference what works for someone else: figure out what feels right to you. Start with what feels comfortable. Over time, your risk tolerance may increase as you start to see some of the personal rewards that can come from healthy social interactions online. I don’t know what that “reward” may look like for you: keeping in touch with family, expanding your professional network, establishing yourself as an expert in your field…there are endless possible benefits.

3. Start trying stuff out, and see how you like it. Keep doing the stuff that feels right and quit the stuff that doesn’t.

This one should be pretty self-explanatory. Explore. Hey, it’s the internet: it’s pretty fun, and you won’t break it.

Online vs. Offline

Ok, really? This “process” is just a digital version of what we do in real life all the time. We edit ourselves every moment of every day based on our environment (am I at home or at work?), our company (am I with my boss or my swear-like-a-pirate sister?), and our motivation (am I trying to get a job with this person or trying to get them to wake up?). The thing is, in real life, we rarely need to stop to think about it. It just happens. It’s a natural human response to our surroundings.

Online, we don’t have those same social cues. Updating my Facebook status feels different than standing in front of a room filled with 500 people, and yet the two actions have a similar effect. So, here’s a pro tip: don’t post anything online that you wouldn’t stand up and say in front of a room full of strangers. It sounds simple, but I’m often amazed at the things people say online that they would never have the guts to say to someone’s face. So, while you don’t need to draft some kind of complex content diagram for yourself, it’s important to take a minute to think about what you want to share online because of its ease and relative permanance.

I’ll admit I’ve had my fair share of awkward moments where I’ve shared something that I later wish I wouldn’t have. It happens. It’s easy to forget when you’re tweeting or blogging or Facebooking that you’re writing something that could be seen by a whole lot of people — some of whom you may not know — and that it’s contributing to their idea of who you are.

So while “personal brand” is a popular term (and one I’ve been known to use myself), I don’t think anyone needs to take themselves so seriously that they need to create an official brand strategy for themselves (and, by extension, some kind of complicated personal social media plan).

If I had to sum up my thoughts on this in two sentences, it’d be this: Think, but don’t think too hard. Be the best human being you can be, and it will come through in everything you do — online and off.

Event: ClockworkShop – Social Media 101

Posted on November 2, 2010

Next Wednesday, November 10th, Clockwork is hosting our first ever (and first in a, hopefully, long series) ClockworkShop – featuring the Geek Girls Guide. Once again, Meghan and I will be discussing Social Media and providing an overview of the social landscape. Our Social Media 101 presentation has been billed as one for ‘newbies’ and the deck is certainly one of our more well-traveled slideshows. To be honest, The Geek Girls Guide is ready to get past the social media hype and start exploring new ideas, emerging technologies and bigger conversations. We are the first to say that we have no interest in pigeon-holing ourselves as ‘social media speakers’. The more compelling part of the social discussion is how we are changing culturally. There is so much to discuss and to be explored around that cultural shift.

One of the points we make on the Clockwork website, and in so many conversations, is that the web has always been social. This recent, overwhelming interest in social channels has been fun to watch. But it’s not new. The web has always been about connections, conversations and relationships. The tools that facilitate these are just that much more accessible. Business is about relationships. Our culture and how we communicate is changing. There are much bigger conversations to have. We want our Social Media 101 session to be the first of many – empowering our audience to tell their own stories and connect with messages and influencers that resonate with them. But we want to make sure that everyone is on board for the next ‘big thing’. We can’t push so hard for what’s next if there are still people with questions about what’s now.

This website was developed to be a resource for people outside of our industry. Many social media practitioners are talking about the value of the medium inside of a vacuum. They are talking to each other. We wanted to add another voice to the discussion and focus our energy outward. These workshops are not for people in our industry. They are not for Social Evangelists. It’s just that there are still so many questions and still so much confusion around social media – what is is, how it should be used and how we should be thinking about it – that we still think these introductory discussions are necessary. So, as much as we want to continue to push the needle forward and encourage and facilitate new conversations and new adventures, we also can’t disregard what our audience is asking of us.

Do join us next week on Wednesday evening. There are only a few seats left. And do look for future ClockworkShops featuring the Geek Girls Guide, and many other brilliant and talented Clockworkers covering everything from knitting, to bicycle maintenance to technology and usability. We are excited to expand our education and outreach efforts. We look forward to sharing that work with you. And, as always, we thank you for being a fellow geek, or geek wannabe.

A Streetcar Named Desire To Post My Pic On Twitter.

Posted on September 6, 2010

A couple of weeks ago some friends and I attended a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Guthrie Theatre. It was a real night on the town, with dinner beforehand, and excellent seats to a truly entertaining production. For those of you not in the immediate area, it should be noted that the Guthrie is a world renowned theatre that attracts exceptional, even famous talent to it’s stage and behind the scenes, and it isn’t unusual for Broadway bound shows to begin at the Guthrie. Streetcar was no exception, boasting a killer cast with remarkable pedigrees, and even pulling in a bit of pop culture with the casting of Ricardo Antonio Chavira from the ABC show Desperate Housewives in the role of Stanley Kowalski. The role made famous by Marlon Brando in the 1951 film. This isn’t a review of the show. My feelings for the production are pretty straight-forward. I loved it. The staging was perfect. The casting was brilliant. Everything about that show made for a perfect evening. But for the last two weeks, one moment has been gnawing at me and I wanted to share it here, to get your thoughts, and perhaps contribute to a conversation that has got to move forward.

We were seated just before curtain and our seats in the theatre were excellent. I was thrilled. The lights were dim, the stage was set, the warm glow of a streetlamp the brightest point in the room. That set was impressive, it looked like an actual spot in New Orleans. The weathered brick, the dingy interior, the colors and textures perfectly muted to suggest a certain age to this exterior. I pulled out my iphone to take a picture of this gorgeous set and as soon as I got it up to eye level the usher was next to me telling me the set was copyrighted and I wasn’t allowed to photograph it. I nodded and tucked my phone into my pocket. That was that. Only it wasn’t. There wasn’t sufficient light for me to get a decent picture anyway. But that wasn’t the point. I really just wanted to rave about that initial impression of the set and the mood it set for the audience. But, the set was ‘copyrighted’ and that wasn’t ok.

These last couple of years arts organizations have taken a big hit with the economy. Seeing plays falls low on the priority list when you are watching your finances take a nose dive. As this sort of entertainment falls lower on the list, it may fall away from the radar. Certainly arts orgs are countering the effects of the economy with more aggressive marketing and trying to pack a lot of value into ticket prices. But non-profits never have enough money to really market the way they want to. There are always corners being cut. Meanwhile, someone like me, with zero interest in ripping off any set construction ideas, and a couple thousand followers on Twitter, has a desire to do some free marketing for an arts org, and I can’t. It makes no sense.

Recently, Meghan and I have conducted a series of workshops for the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. We talked about websites on a budget and the basics of social media. Sure, the Guthrie didn’t have anyone in attendance. But they aren’t entirely unlike so many of the arts orgs we talked to. Because of budget constraints and different priorities, arts organizations are sort of slow to recognize the power of web and social tools. They know they can sell tickets on the web. They know they can present marketing messages there. But, beyond that, they seem to focus much of their dollars and energy into the things they’ve always done. I am a closet theatre geek, and I’ve watched that slow progress with a special interest. My old college theatre took forever to get a Facebook page, and they made little, if any, use of their website. They weren’t on Twitter, and I doubt that they are there now. And yet, ticket sales and community support are vital to the ongoing health of that department. Even here, the biggest, most prestigious theatre, The Guthrie, took forever to invest in a redesigned website. Settling for a giant image as backdrop for their site for years. Now they seem to have a dynamic, Drupal powered website and a very active Facebook page. In fact, the Guthrie is doing some of the things we talked about in the MRAC discussions — letting their audience in on how elements of the stage come together. It’s so compelling watching the actual craft of stagecraft assemble whole, realistic sets. Theatre isn’t just about the actors — the set and the costumes tell the story too. Sometimes, as in the case of A Streetcar Named Desire, the set IS pretty darn close to a character. Hot and heavy and dingy and weathered and well traveled, and noisy – setting the tone and even aggravating the heat and tension of the plot.

Having worked on a number of stage crews in my youth, I know how tedious getting to that final set can be. But how miraculous it seems when everything comes together. It’s a real art – deciding how to present a setting, considering the staging, the actors and what they need from a set, what the text requires combined with what the director envisions. There is so much that plays in to those choices that would, honestly, be riveting to some audience members or potential theatre-goers. Not to mention the opportunity to reach new audiences, sell more tickets. Maybe the Desperate Housewives guys wasn’t such a great draw to some. But perhaps that set would have inspired someone to want to see it close up.

I guess I just think that arts orgs, and especially theatre arts, need to start embracing some of the new social tools and abandoning the way it’s always been. Sometimes we stick to what we know because it works. But these days, when the economy is in the toilet, and people are staying home, we can’t afford to be stuck. We have to look to our evangelists and our ambassadors to do what comes naturally — to talk about us. To rave about us, even. There is something romantic about going to the theatre. The whole experience, the entire event, has an air of romance. A good theatre experience can take you along for a multi-sensory ride and when done right you’ve got something to think about and talk about for days or weeks. Let us talk about it. I’m not going to steal your set. Chances are anyone who does have unethical intentions around your ideas has other ways to pursue them. We don’t need to get crazy and shoot flash pictures during a performance. Nobody wants that. But I do think letting us borrow details to tell the story and talk about our experience with it will only serve the production, and the theatre itself, very well.

Storytelling in the Facebook Era

Posted on June 3, 2010

For several weeks the tech world, and much of the mainstream population, has been buzzing with discussion around Facebook and privacy. It turns out that Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook’s founder and CEO) and his crew think sharing, and not privacy, should be the new default and they had set out to make that a reality. The anxiety really hit full throttle during the Facebook developer conference when Zuckerburg announced some significant changes around who has access to the data that Facebook collects and how it might be used. People are angry and confused. Some senators have even authored a letter to Zuckerburg asking him to rethink the default privacy settings they were rolling out. Then last week Zuckerberg announced that Facebook has decided to readdress the default settings and make it easier for people to keep their information under wraps. Still, people are continuing to react to and push back on the issue of privacy and protections around information they share online. There are boycotts of Facebook in the works. This is serious business – not a day has passed without some significant, front page media coverage of the controversy.

I strongly believe this discussion, as loud and emotional as it feels, is necessary because it is shaping the bigger issue of evolution – ours and how we communicate. But, believe it or not, this blog post isn’t really about the privacy settings themselves. Instead, this post is about something I’ve been considering for quite some time and it has only become more obvious to me since the volume of this privacy discussion has gotten so loud. In some ways I think Zuckerburg forcing our hands on the issue of privacy is also forcing something we should have instinctively been better about. Because we’re suddenly so concerned about who has access to all of our personal information I think we’re also suddenly being much more thoughtful about what we choose to share. The bite in the butt is — we should have seen this as a critical issue and been this thoughtful all along. But, as the saying goes, better late than never. We are all curators of content, archivers, historians and storytellers. This is a much bigger responsibility than we imagined when we started posting pictures of ourselves in our underwear standing next to the keg (present company excluded, of course). Wherever Facebook ends up in this privacy debate, whether or not they actually address the concerns of the public, really doesn’t matter. All of us are starting to realize a new responsibility – to ourselves and to our current and future audiences.

It used to be that only certain stories – the more polished or politically appropriate stories – were published for the world to see. Publishers decided what was worthy of mass consumption. The rest of the world were consumers of print and, eventually, consumers of all media. All media worked like this and people got rich off of it. Big newspaper publishers decided what was news and got rich. Big motion picture studios decided what was entertainment and got rich. Big television networks decided what was worthy of our living rooms. The media in the last few years has become fragmented by social media and consumer generated content. But the term consumer ‘generated’ doesn’t really tell the whole story, does it? We aren’t just ‘generating’ or ‘creating’ content, we’re publishing it – to a global audience. And because of the immediacy and the ease-of-use of the technology we’ve significantly underestimated the reach, or potential reach of our content. When the big rich media tycoons owned everything we didn’t think twice about distribution and reach. Now that we are contributing to this global archive and telling our stories – we still aren’t thinking twice about distribution and reach. What’s more, because of the immediacy of the experience of publishing, we aren’t really thinking about the importance of the content. See, because we are all (suddenly) historians, archivists, story-tellers. We are all recording history — our own, our family history, brand stories. It seems to me if we start thinking of it as something that carries a little more weight, something that has more cultural importance, then suddenly the issue of Facebook privacy pales in comparison to our responsibility as content creators. I guess I am just suggesting that instead of demonizing Facebook (which is really so easy to do) it’s time to think bigger picture. It’s time to recognize that communication and the documentation of history and the sharing of stories looks much different than in past generations and it’s just going to continue to change. Instead of worrying whether or not Facebook is going to let the world, or future employers see pictures of you with your pants on your head, I would suggest you simply be more thoughtful when you consider publishing those (granted, sometimes you have no choice because someone else does it for you). I just can’t help but feel that we are having the wrong conversations. Instead of pushing for privacy, which is clearly changing and certainly isn’t the default, perhaps we should push for thoughtfulness and responsibility in the telling of our stories.

This privacy thing – it’s a losing battle. We are everywhere. We’re dropping little breadcrumbs of our lives everywhere we go online and when you add to that all of the intentional or inadvertent content we create or contribute to then you must know there are whole and detailed profiles about you just under the hood of the internet. Yes, some things are sacred — like social security numbers and how much you weigh. But think about it – they are sacred because WE (that’s the collective we – which means everybody) treat them that way. It’s a culturally accepted fact that social security numbers are sacred. It used to be a cultural reality that stories were sacred. Passed down from generation to generation and shared during special occasions. Maybe they were embellished with detail for dramatic flair, but that was done with reverence and out of pride. Now stories are just immediate – someone shoves a beer bong up their nose, someone else takes video of it, and we don’t think twice about sharing that with the world. I’m not suggesting that a beer bong in the nose is not share-worthy. I am suggesting though, that if all you share is beer bong stunts than you become the beer bong guy and is that really who you want to be? You get my drift. There is a need for maybe a little more reverence in how we communicate. No – this doesn’t mean we are not humorous or ironic or even inappropriate. I think we really need to start thinking about telling the stories that are worthy of our time and energy and attention. What picture are you painting? What legacy are you leaving? When it’s all compiled – someday, by someone else, looking to discover who we were in this bygone era – well, who will we be? A generation fighting against an inevitable evolution? Or a generation that embraced change and recognized our responsibility within it? I, for one, would like to be among the latter. I am blessed by the brilliant people in my world, a career I am passionate about, a fantastic family, a good life. There’s a story there. I’m going to tell it.

iPad Leakage

Posted on January 27, 2010

There’s a lot of chatter about the iPad today, and not just about its features. Many people are commenting on, and joking about, the name (iTampon is currently a trending topic on Twitter). For 50% of us, the word “pad” means something other than a notebook.

Upon hearing the name, I tweeted: “I refuse to say iPad; sounds like a feminine product. I’m calling it iTab. So there, Jobs!”

Most women in my Twitter stream were either tweeting something similar, or giving me the “Amen, sister.” Meanwhile, comments like this started cropping up from the dudes:

seem to be the only one who’s not shocked/grossed out by the name and will go as far as to say it was the only real choice. –@rett
sorry, women, you don’t own the word “pad”. – @lolife

It’s not surprising that many (if not most) men are baffled about why anyone would be weirded out by the name iPad. It makes sense because they’ve never (I hope) used a pad and they don’t have any associations with that word. Sadly, I’m having no luck thinking up a parallel product name that men might think was odd but that women wouldn’t care about. (iJockstrap? Nah. iNutpunch? Uh, no. iMorningwood? Hrm.)

So, let’s be clear: is the name iPad going to prevent me from buying this product? No. But it does tell me that it’s unlikely that any women were involved in the naming of this product. (My other favorite example of a product name I’m pretty sure no women weighed in on: the Ford Probe.)

Tellingly, Apple’s promotional video for the iPad contains not. one. woman. It features interviews with the men who developed it, and action shots of male hand models using it. I don’t know, maybe it was hard to find women willing to star in a film called iPad. (I can’t imagine why.)

So, here’s the deal: I’m not offended. I just think it’s interesting that Apple picked a loaded (for women) term for their new product, and it’s strange that they couldn’t be bothered to show even ONE woman using it. And yet, we (and our wallets) will be crucial to its success. But, hell, for all I know this was all intentional. The folks at Apple are no fools when it comes to marketing, and in an “any publicity is good publicity” world, Apple is crushing it today.

All of this just reminds me of how much I’m looking forward to the day when there are more women involved in the development and creation of tech products. After all, we’re already buying and using them at nearly the same rate as our male counterparts.

Giving Thanks In National Adoption Month

Posted on November 26, 2009

Thanksgiving sends us all through the same exercise – we think about those things for which we are most thankful. Generally, the first thing that comes to mind is one’s family. Families are a great gift and the people that make home feel like home. November is also National Adoption Month so it seems only logical that I should share with you my story – the one in which I was lucky enough to create what is now my family with more than a little help from technology and early social media. Just maybe what I share here will be of some help or comfort to someone who may stumble upon this post and find in it a little nugget of hope when they need it most.

Adoption is a very personal decision. I think those people on the outside of it make assumptions about why people decide to adopt. But those assumptions are generally a pretty narrow view of reality. In truth, some people just know that adoption is the path for them. I have always been one of those people. I always knew I’d be a parent, but I never felt any sort of compelling urge to give birth. Adoption is one of those subjects that exists in the periphery of cultural consciousness until you decide that you want to pursue it. Once you are serious about becoming a parent via adoption, a whole subculture starts to reveal itself to you. But not without a pretty significant amount of investigation. Thankfully, when I began my journey, I was already very familiar with the internet. Unfortunately, the adoption industry had not yet caught up to technology and was slow to adopt new channels of communication. At the time I started I was able to research adoption agencies through newsgroups. (Remember those? Newsgroups?) I’d hear about one, and then I’d search various adoption newsgroups for people with experience with the agency. Then I’d make contact with those people and, if it made sense, follow up with contact with the agency itself. Let’s put this in context, I started this process over 9 years ago and it took me six years to find my son. The web was still a less than effective way to really find and connect with resources in a way that really moved the process forward. But for me it was a little different. I was a blogger.

When we talk about Social Media, the Geek Girls try to point out the value of blogs and bloggers as community builders and mechanisms for two-way dialogue. In a world where Facebook is the social tool dujour, and Twitter is Facebook’s cooler, thinner younger sibling, blogs tend to get dismissed as less than social and certainly not as powerful for creating connections. But my story suggests otherwise. My blog was where I chronicled not so much the boring adoption journey itself, but my emotional response to a process that really isn’t very forgiving of emotion. See adoption is a lot about preparation, anticipation, anxiety, hope, disappointment, grief and, if everything finally comes together, ultimately its about celebration. Being embroiled in the adoption process (read: bureaucracy) for six years meant quite a few blog posts about this crazy range of emotions. I don’t need to recap all of it here, but I will tell you that we started pursuing international adoption, which has it’s own set of complications associated with it. We accepted and lost two referrals (a referral is a child in adoption speak) about 18 months apart (this was after waiting over a year for the first referral). Those children just disappeared into the ether that is that process. With the international thing no one ever tells you where the referrals go — they are just gone. We switched agencies three times. We transitioned from international to domestic in shifting from one agency to the next. Each comes with its own set of fears. International is expensive and the process can be long and disappointing, depending on the country. But with domestic adoption there is the fear of the first mom changing her mind or the first dad not really being on board. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy though, right? As I moved along this path I talked about it on my personal blog. And the craziest thing started to happen. I started to meet people who were rooting for me, or who were also embroiled in the adoption conundrum, or people that had been victorious and were wise, experienced parents of adopted children. A real dialogue and a real community of supportive humans started to emerge and they stayed with me through the entire ordeal.

I blogged when I was confused by paperwork. I blogged when we got our first referral. I blogged when I lost sleep and when that referral drifted away, when the invitation to travel to another country never came and when our adoption agency dealt with some shady issues. I blogged over my frustration with the wait and the silence and with people who popped out babies one after the other. I wasn’t really doing it for anyone else. I didn’t expect anyone would care or be moved to return to my site or participate in the discussion. I just needed to say what I had to say and my blog was that outlet. But people were reading and they did care and they were participating. It was single people, married people, straight and gay, moms and dads, grandparents. People who wanted kids. People who didn’t. Families immersed in the adoption quagmire. I was humbled and grateful for every blog comment, every email, every new friend or acquaintance. They kept me hopeful on those days when I had no other reason to be. And six years into it, when I was ready to give up hope, I wrote a blog post in response to a woman who, when suffering from mental illness, threw her twin babies into the Mississippi river. I wrote her a letter, actually. Her and anyone like her that was struggling. It wasn’t really for her or them. It was for me. It was my inner dialogue coming out and I published it for the world. I begged her and anyone like her to please please consider me. Not ‘me’ per se. But us – all of us in that place – that limbo between wanting a child and having a child. That place that is a cloud of confusion and desperation and hopefulness. That letter, that personal plea, that prayer moved my little community into a conversation I can’t really describe. Suddenly I was receiving emails with suggestions for immediate action that I should take. People who’d had luck with one angle or another were sharing their secrets and I was determining which to pursue.

I moved again into the breach with renewed energy and a feeling that this would be my last great effort at reaching out and trying to find my family. One suggestion was an aggregated list managed by a woman who collected crisis situations from all over the country. So instead of aligning with an agency, I would be choosing to pursue individual situations. I don’t want to get into the mechanics of the adoption process, that’s not what this post is about. But, suffice it to say, these people in my online community altered my perception of what was possible and when I decided to think absolutely outside of my comfort zone and pursue these various options, things started to happen. I followed up on a couple of crisis situations, which led me to a conversation with an adoption coordinator who remembered me months later when a woman came to them looking for a family just like ours. We were interviewed by the first mom and her family, we ultimately met them and grew to care very deeply for them. In July of 2006 my son was born and we took him home 48 hours later. When I am asked if the wait was worth it I always answer in the affirmative. Because now that I know him, I know why we had to wait. It was for him. He is exactly who we were supposed to meet. He is our family.

Why is this a Geek Girls post? Why have I decided to share this today? Because with all of this talk of social media and the miracle that it is for business (I use the word ‘miracle’ facetiously) and personal branding, at the end of the day these are human interactions. It is our humanity that moves the needle forward – a little at a time. With all of our tweets and status updates, pictures and connections, I want us to recognize that ‘transparency’ is just a buzz word. What we really want is honesty and authenticity and humanity and, even a little vulnerability. We are not connecting because we are fabulous. We are connecting because we are real. We are flawed. We NEED each other. We learn and grow from and support each other. We challenge each other. The tools have changed. There is more possibility for connection. The conversations might be bigger. But we are still perfectly imperfect humans.

On this Thanksgiving I am thankful for my family. My bright shining light – my boy. His first mom and dad and the gift they gave us. And all of the lovely, far-away people on the internet who never let me lose hope, who gave me energy and ideas, and ultimately (whether they know it or not) led me to my son. Happy Thanksgiving.

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*Note: this post is not meant to be representative of the adoption process in any way. It merely reflects my experience with it. Every experience is different. Adoption is a worthy, worthwhile pursuit and I wouldn’t change a thing about the path that lead me to my son.

Additional Resources

National Adoption Day

Adopting.org

Adoption.com